The deputy leader of the Green Party on Hertfordshire County Council has challenged the authority to get tough on drivers of idling vehicles – backed up by fines on offenders.

Idling is the practice of a driver sitting in a stationary vehicle with the engine running, thereby wasting fuel, polluting the air with exhaust emissions and increasing wear and tear.

At a meeting of the council on Tuesday (December 9), Cllr Matt Fisher (Green, St Albans Central) said to council leader Cllr Steve Jarvis: "I'm sure we will all agree clean air is not a luxury, it is a basic public health right – especially for children who have no choice over the air they breathe on the school run.

"So given the clear evidence linking engine idling to nitrogen dioxide, fine particulates childhood asthma and life-long damage to lungs, and given that this council already has legal powers to act, will the leader at the county council now commit to a fully enforceable, county-wide roll-out of anti-idling measures, including the issuing of statutory fines by civil enforcement officers, rather than continuing to rely on voluntary compliance alone?

"Will this begin outside schools, in town centres and in densely populated areas so we protect those at greatest risk first?"

In response, Cllr Jarvis acknowledged the issue, the improvement that had occurred and the need to take further advice.

"It is clearly the case that air quality is a significant issue, and it is a significant issue for adults and particularly for children," he said.

"It is fair to say there have been some improvements in some of the worst areas, largely as a result of reductions in vehicle emissions and there being more vehicles without internal combustion engines. 

"Clearly that doesn't solve the entire problem because there are issues around brake dust and tyre dust. 

"I would have to take some advice on what our statutory capabilities are.

"I think that inevitably any effective policy is going to require a degree of persuasion as well, because these sorts of changes only work when people are taken with you.

"Regards to what our options are for compulsion, I have to get back to you on that because I am not sufficiently familiar with the legal details."

Afterwards, Cllr Fisher – who is also a member of St Albans District Council – said that idling was not only harmful to those outside vehicles but inside them too.

He suggested that with the "helping hand" of enforcement, motorists may change their views on the practice in the same way that attitudes to the use of plastic bags and mobile phones behind the wheel have changed.

"There's a misconception that you're safe in the car," he said, adding that air quality could be 30 times poorer inside a car.

"People sit there in summer with the air conditioning on or the heater in winter. The problem is it's spewing out pollutants and toxic gases – but it also circulates inside the car. There's a misconception that it's a clean chamber in the car, but it's really really not."

Cllr Fisher, who has already campaigned in car parks near schools around St Albans, said that in addition to the soft touch approach he believes the "helping hand" of enforcement may be needed.

In the council chamber on Tuesday, he also asked if the council would commit to significantly increased and ring-fenced budget so thiswould be treated as genuine public health and climate intervention "and not a side project".

Cllr Jarvis told him he would have to wait for the council's budget, which is due to be set in February.

"As you are aware, the council doesn't have unlimited resources – and indeed the indications are from Government that resources will be less this year – and there are, as I am sure you are aware, many competing demands on those.

"This is clearly an important one, but many of the others are important. So I'm afraid the answer is 'you will have to wait and see'."